Ordered a few more parts on Friday, picked up a couple of things from a different source on Saturday, plus I started to sort the electrics and a couple of other things Saturday morning. The terminal strip that attaches to the top triple clamp has one end mangled up - one of the things I ordered - so I'll replace that soon. One of the bolts that holds it and the headlight on was stripped. Unlike the rest of the 5/16" bolts I've come across so far, these are coarse threads rather than fine. I'm assuming that's because the triple clamp is made of aluminum but the bolts that hold the gauges on which are right next to the others are fine thread. If that was stock, that's just asking for trouble. I have a Heli-Coil kit for the coarse thread bolts so I went ahead and fixed the bad thread. The only problem involved was the fact I had to remove the handlebars in order to get enough clearance for the tap wrench. Since the tie downs were attached to the handlebars, I made a quickie bracket out of a piece of flat bar and bolted it to the boss on the down tubes for a new mounting point - after I ran a tap through one of the holes to chase the threads, of coarse. Another 5/16" fine thread that wasn't so very fine.
One of the things I'm finding out is even though I've got lots of junk, I don't have some of the right type. I was lucky to have a little piece of the flat bar that I could use for the hold-down bracket without it being a big deal. I was looking for a small piece of aluminum the other day and couldn't fine anything. When I was at the high school, I always had a pile of "shorts" I could go to when I needed a little piece of something. If I'm going to continue to work on this stuff, which I certainly plan on doing, eventually I'll end up with a bunch of little cut-offs, but in the meantime, I need to start building up an inventory of some of the common stuff needed for making brackets, gussets and such. Small angle, flat bar, small pieces of 12 gauge sheet - the usual suspects.
As long as I had to remove the gauges, I took the back off one of them to see about the lights. Nothing in there for illuminating the gauge face or the high beam indicator. Since this model year had Japanese gauges on it, I might have something laying around that will fit. Maybe take a look around later today.
Still lots to do. I figured this job more as a pull the parts out of the boxes and bolt it all together and not fix everything that has threads on it but it's all coming together. It's going to be nice when it's done.
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